The gun manufacturer said the market had an adequate supply of sporting rifles and it would focus on its military and law enforcement contracts instead.
The gun maker Colt said on Thursday that it would effectively suspend production of sporting rifles, including the AR-15, for the civilian market but continue to manufacture rifles for government weapons contracts.
In a
statement on its website, Colt emphasized that the company remained “committed to the Second Amendment,” but cited market conditions for its decision.
“Over the last few years, the market for modern sporting rifles has experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity,” Dennis Veilleux, the company’s chief executive, said in the statement. “Given this level of manufacturing capacity, we believe there is adequate supply for modern sporting rifles for the foreseeable future.”
Colt’s decision is unlikely to make it more difficult for gun buyers to get their hands on powerful semiautomatic weapons, said Timothy D. Lytton, an expert on the gun industry at Georgia State University.
“If there’s market demand,” he said, “I’m sure there are other companies with the capacity to fill it.”
The AR-15, a military-style weapon, has been used in several recent mass shootings, including in Newtown, Conn.; Orlando, Fla.; and Parkland, Fla.
Major retailers and other businesses linked to the gun industry have faced growing public pressure to take steps to curb gun violence in response to recent mass shootings. After a shooting in August at one of its stores in El Paso,
Walmart said it would stop selling ammunition that could be used in military-style assault rifles.
Colt did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday. But in the statement, Mr. Veilleux emphasized that the company, whose products are available at more than 4,000 dealers across the country, would continue to manufacture handguns for the consumer market.
The financial effect of the decision is unclear. Colt, a private company, does not list sales for its sporting rifles on its website.
While Colt has framed it as an economic decision, Mr. Lytton said, the public pressure may have influenced the company. He noted that Colt was based in Hartford, Conn., not far from the site of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
“The mass shootings are probably making the company a little bit brand-sensitive,” Mr. Lytton said. “They’re probably feeling a kind of pressure or heat that manufacturers in other parts of the country may not be.”
The news that Colt would stop producing rifles for consumers was
reported last week in an industry blog, The Truth About Guns, which cited an email the RSR Group, a firearms distributor, had sent to retailers saying Colt had informed it of the policy change. A spokeswoman for the RSR Group declined to comment.
And last week, a Colt marketing executive told the National Rifle Association’s publication Shooting Illustrated that the company had seen “a pretty sharp decline in rifle sales.”
Colt is the manufacturer most closely associated with the AR-15, a lightweight, semiautomatic weapon. The Colt Armalite Rifle-15 Sporter
hit the market in the early 1960s as the first civilian version of the military’s M16 rifle.
Over the years, however, the AR-15 has become a catchall for a range of weapons that look and operate similarly, including the Remington Bushmaster, the Smith & Wesson M&P15 and the Springfield Armory Saint.
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